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Home , Darl McBride, Groklaw, Pamela Jones, Parsix, SCO Group, Solus (operating system)

This ISSUE: Edge War games GPL violation Android arguments Big brother shuts down Award-winning, freedom-defending legal site to close over privacy fears.

roklaw, the legal site set up to US out or to the US in, but really fight the protracted SCO vs anywhere. You don’t expect a stranger GIBM case (see boxout, below) to read your private communications to has folded after 10 years of award- a friend. And once you know they can, winning campaigning journalism. The what is there to say? Constricted and site’s founder, , cited fears distracted … That’s how I feel.” that she would not be able to protect the identity of sources in the light of Thanks for all the fishes recent revelations over email security. Jones, a paralegal by training, set up Writing in the site’s last post, Jones Groklaw to bridge the gap in said: “The owner of Lavabit tells us that understanding between the worlds of he’s stopped using email and if we knew the programmer and the courtroom. what he knew, we’d stop too. There is no Although it was originally intended to way to do Groklaw without email. provide clarity over the SCO vs IBM legal Therein lies the conundrum. fight, Groklaw also helped other legal “I hope that makes it clear why I cases with implications for , can’t continue. There is now no shield including Oracle vs , vs Groklaw spoke rather than comply with a demand that from forced exposure. Nothing in that and Apple vs just about truth to power, it be given access to its users’ email parenthetical thought list is terrorism- everyone in the world. and power accounts. He posted at the time: “I have related, but no one can feel protected The owner of Lavabit (the email doesn’t like that been forced to make a difficult decision: very much. enough from forced exposure any more provider used by, among others, US to become complicit in crimes against to say anything the least bit like that to whistleblower Edward Snowden), Ladar the American people or walk away from anyone in an email, particularly from the Levison, closed the service in August nearly 10 years of hard work.” Lavabit had complied with an earlier investigation into a suspected Groklaw vs SCO paedophile, so the issue here isn’t one of legitimate cooperation with the In March 2003 the SCO group sued authorities; rather, it looks as though IBM over alleged copyright Levison and Jones didn’t want to infringement for $1bn (later rising to subject their users to fishing $5bn). SCO alleged that IBM stole code expeditions. Whatever the cause, the that SCO owned, and illegally contributed it to the kernel. Many years and many millions of dollars later, “There is now no shield the case eventually petered out, with the ruling that SCO didn’t even own the from forced exposure.” allegedly infringed code in the first place. In the meantime the case Pamela Jones, Groklaw spawned suit and counter suit. Former SCO CEO Darl McBride. SCO failed to identify the code in internet will be a poorer place without question, attempted to collect a licence Linux that may have slowed Linux Groklaw. Big companies will find it fee from Linux users, and tried to warn adoption in business, and definitely easier to bully smaller companies, off companies that were using Linux. added fuel to the fire of Microsoft’s governments will find it easier to bully In hindsight SCO’s claims were anti-free software marketing. We have subjects, and we’ve all lost a valuable risible, but at the time they created an Groklaw to thank for exposing SCO’s resource for understanding the atmosphere of uncertainty around claims for the nonsense they were. increasingly complicated world of software rights.

6 LXF176 November 2013 www.linuxformat.com Newsdesk

Quixotry Newsbytes

According to a proposal put forward at the Flock Ubuntu Edge falls conference for Fedora contributors, the distro could be moving back to the days of Fedora Core, when a base distro was released along with short of $32m goal several meta packages to enable users to tailor the distro to their Only $12.6m pledged to bring super- into requirements. Or, as is the way with production, but the future looks bright for Ubuntu phones. suggestions made at conferences, perhaps things will stay as they are. he Ubuntu Edge, the smartphone-cum- the Edge, a fact acknowledged by Shuttleworth in On 16 August 2013 it was the desktop PC replacement, has failed to a statement from : “The big winner from 20th birthday of , the Treach its ambitious $32m funding goal this campaign is Ubuntu. While we passionately foundation distro for Ubuntu and on the crowdfunding platform IndieGogo. wanted to build the Edge to showcase Ubuntu on Mint and, lest we forget, a damn fine However, there are some positives to be drawn phones, the support and attention it received will distro in its own right. The first from the experience, according to Canonical still be a huge boost as other Ubuntu phones start Debian release came just two years founder . to arrive in 2014.” after the announcement of the “It’s definitely set a record for the most money , so hats off to the raised,” Shuttleworth told the Guardian shortly Debian folks for spotting the before the campaign ended, “but also for the potential of Linus’ creation. most missed in a campaign.” , the man who The previous record for the most amount of famously described Linux as a money pledged in a crowdfunding campaign was “cancer that attaches itself in an the $10.2m raised by the Pebble smartwatch. The sense to Edge beat that with $12.6m pledged, but everything that it touches”, has according to the conditions of the IndieGogo announced that he will step down funding platform, this money must now be as Microsoft CEO within the next 12 returned to the backers, so Canonical hasn’t months. Hyperbole aside, under his actually raised a single penny. stewardship the company has What it has raised, however, is a ton of media continued to make loads of money. coverage. The Sun, the Guardian, the BBC, the Well done Steve! Independent, Wired and several other outlets No $32m for the Ubuntu Edge, but loads of have been falling over themselves to write about publicity for the fight against Android and Apple.

Games

More guns on Linux Sweden © Microsoft

Two top titles are coming our way. Photo credit All together now: “Developers! e’re very soon to get two more Developers! Developers! excellent games, both featuring guns Developers! Developers!” and shooting things. Wargame: Airland W Our Bulgarian correspondent Battle, a real-time strategy game set in the Cold tells us that LG’s head of War years of 1975-85, is at the time of writing in mobile for that country has beta for Linux and OS X at a tasty 50% discount. revealed that the company intends The multiplayer mode is cross platform, so early to enter the OS market, and adopters will be able to team up with gamers could do so as early as the first playing on the PC version. What’s more, the beta quarter of 2014. will automatically upgrade to the full version when Google has released the it gets its official release. binary code and OS disk Also available is the remake of The Chaos images for its latest Nexus 7 Engine, the classic top-down shoot-’em-up that Android . If the earned much praise when it was released for the company follows its usual pattern, Amiga in 1993. The original will be preserved the source code and SDK will follow – just in a form ported to Linux, OS X and in a few weeks. Windows – and there will also be an enhanced The Chaos Engine is set in a Victorian England version, for extra steampunk gun-based fun. controlled by a rogue Babbage-like scientist.

www.tuxradar.com November 2013 LXF176 7 Newsdesk

Comment Mobile Gregor violates GPL, then fixes it Mendel Company quick to comply with licensing conditions.

Michael Meeks amsung, the world-leading question under the GPL]. We take our mobile device manufacturer responsibility to abide by open source This month’s Sresponsible for putting Linux licences seriously and recognise the highlight was a into the hands of millions in the shape value that open source software brings.” of the Android mobile OS, has violated As well it might: having overtaken trip to the the GPL by incorporating sections of Apple, Samsung is the world’s largest Gnome Users GPL code into some of its software manufacturer of mobile phones, thanks And Developers European Conference aimed at working with Microsoft’s largely to Android, Linux – and the GPL. (GUADEC) in the Czech Republic. Amusingly ExFAT filesystem. this was preceded by some advanced negative Soon after the infringement was speculation about this being “the last pointed out, by a hacker calling herself GUADEC”. What I saw in Brno convinced me rxrz, Samsung put itself in contact with the Software Freedom Conservancy that this is not so, indeed I was thrilled to see Group, which worked together with the community unfazed by such chatter. Samsung to ensure that it was One of the big moves in Gnome this year is complying with the GPL. the drive to use the Wayland display server in Ibrahim Haddad, head of open place of X11. The hope is that this will provide a source innovation at Samsung, told step change in quality of rendering: every frame Wired that “After discussing with will be perfect. It should also significantly multiple open source organisations and improve graphics extensibility and drop a lot of getting their thoughts on this matter, The GPL obliges those who use it to we proceeded [to release the code in share the improvements they make. baggage from the long and twisted past ofX11 . The developers committed to shipping Gnome on Wayland in distributions early next year. software freedom Along those lines, it was also great to see the recent work that Collabora did to make Wayland’s Weston compositor work nicely on Microsoft, cry the Raspberry Pi. That work, exploiting the built-in compositing hardware of the device, foul over Android gives an extremely smooth and slick window management experience even on that low- Companies complain to EU over unfair pricing. power device. I was particularly pleased to catch up with the airSearch.org, an organisation team behind the Evolution personal information devoted to protecting tech manager and see the great work they’ve done Fminnows from being dominated by Google, has issued a complaint to fixing performance and scalability issues, and the European Commission over what it also to compare notes on cleaning the internals sees as ‘predatory pricing’ of the free of another large codebase. Android mobile OS. The wording of the Finally there was a lot of excitement around complaint makes it clear that it’s the , and the plans for generic Linux fact that Android is free that is the really application containment. This has the potential objectionable thing about it. “Google’s predatory distribution of Anyone can use Android for free – for bundling self-contained desktop apps and including Nokia, which rejected it. managing them cross-distribution in a much Android at below-cost makes it difficult for other providers of operating more intuitive way. systems to recoup investments in FairSearch is plainly unsuitable to It is a year of great change and improvement competing with Google’s dominant describe a market where there is no in the Linux desktop space. The board is set, mobile platform,” the complaint says. price, and a product that, being free the pieces are moving and I’m excited about There’s nothing wrong with free software, can literally be taken by where things are heading. though, as the Free Software anybody and ‘forked’.” Foundation Europe pointed out in an FairSearch represents 17 companies

Michael is a pseudo-engineer, semi-colon lover, open letter to the commission: “The with a closed-source business model, SUSE LibreOffice hacker and amateur pundit. predatory pricing theory proposed by including Oracle, Microsoft and Nokia.

8 LXF176 November 2013 www.linuxformat.com Newsdesk

Comment Hitting the mirrors In search What’s behind the free software sofa? of identity Media player If you pine for the lost days of Tony Chapman getting an album home on the bus, then sitting reading the sleeve One thing notes as you obsessively listen to that gets my your new purchase for the first goat is the time, Amarok is for you. This music player, which has just reached constant version 2.8, comes with more bells need for an organisation, particularly within and whistles than any other music Amarok 2.8 includes work by four technology, to have a ‘ image’. While I player on the Linux platform, Google Summer of Code students. agree that it’s important to have an identity, including lyrics, biographies and the issue here is that everyone is trying to even a music quiz. better support for themes other than create what they interpret as the new Google New for 2.8 is a smooth fade- KDE’s standard grey, and a better or Facebook. Everyone has a football table, out feature when pausing music, MusicBrainz database tagger. everyone has table tennis and everyone waxes lyrical about how casual, creative, OS 2 social and ‘cool’ they are – it turns into a SolusOS, the Debian-based distro parody of itself where everyone is trying to be that aims to provide a pure version of so different they are actually all the same! Linux, with applications as close as The main gripe I have about this is the possible to their upstream packages, number of companies I see that are getting it is getting close to its version 2 so wrong and rather than fulfilling their release. Only this time, it’s all being built from scratch rather than based objective of attracting top talent, it is actually on Debian, which makes the jump being detrimental to the process and they are from version 1.0 to 2.0 rather more SolusOS: “a genuine attempt to actually turning people away. Interviews and significant than usual. bring back the true Gnome”… candidate attraction within the technology SolusOS 2 is still in alpha testing sector is now a two-way street and if you’re at the time of writing, but when it’s 4.10 desktop at the heart of a getting the fundamental culture of your ready you can expect to find an lightweight, easy-to-use desktop OS. company wrong, you’re going to struggle. People get paid thousands to create brand Office suite image, but the fundamentals are simple: follow the basics, be true to yourselves and Calligra 2.7 has burst forth on to the over your meticulously assembled your traditional core values. You don’t need to internet, with a release that provides desktop. New for version 2.7 comes a come up with buzzwords to describe how KDE users with an integrated office new toolbox, which is used in Words suite that should fit with all your and Sheets (the word processor and vibrant you are in some naff promotional careful customisation – unlike spreadsheet respectively), better material, you’re better off spending your time AbiWord, LibreOffice and the other export options and improved CSV and resources creating a vibrant atmosphere. GTK applications that ride roughshod data import, among other goodies. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s great building an interesting and fun working environment, however, we can achieve this Linux distro in so many other ways, mainly by creating Like Debian? Like Gnome 3? Then great challenges and cutting-edge technology you’ll like 5.0, which aims to to work with. People aren’t stupid: if the job graft the latest stable version of the isn’t very interesting or challenging, they will Gnome desktop on to the Debian testing branch to create a distro not join just because there is a fridge full of that looks great and benefits from food and employees dress up as the huge package repositories of superheroes for a foosball competition the rigorously free software- every second Thursday. compliant Debian. Gnome 3.8.13, LibreOffice 3.5.4 and more, but Because it’s based on Debian, Tony is a leading Linux and open source recruiter Parsix uses Iceweasel, not Firefox. at specialist agency LinuxRecruit. really it’s all about the polish. www.linuxrecruit.co.uk

10 LXF176 November 2013 www.linuxformat.com